This novel is speculative or science fiction; exploring robotics, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and artificial intelligence. The characters and POV include a human biotech pirate, an “indentured” human, a free robot scientist, an indentured android, other humans and bots. Newitz does a good job of getting into the “minds” of the bots as well as the humans.

Many underlying themes weave through this story—property rights, patents, pharmaceuticals, indenture/slavery, what is human. The plot revolves around the female biotech pirate, Jack, reverse-engineering a drug the makes people love their work. The patented version is very expensive and only available to the rich. Her version is cheap and available. It’s very addictive and some people work themselves to death or cause catastrophes that kill others. She goes to work finding a cure.

Other characters are Eliasz, human, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin, who are working for Big Pharma tracking the pirate. Jack rescues and frees an indentured human. An autonomous robot comes into the story, working with Jack on the cure. Other characters, mostly from Jack’s past, pass through.

I enjoyed the ideas about our future more than the main plot of the story. I also liked the various points of view. Newitz did well poking into the thoughts of robots.